The present invention relates generally to a carriage fixing apparatus which fixes a head carriage for moving a head in a disk driver during transporting and/or shipping thereof, and a disk driver having such a carriage fixing apparatus.
In the well-known disk driver, a head is attached to a head carriage to be moved in a radial direction of a disk. Since the head carriage can be moved in a radial direction of the disk by a small load, it gets damaged when the disk driver is dropped or vibrated. Accordingly, in the conventional disk driver, the head carriage is fixed by the carriage fixing apparatus during transporting and/or shipping.
Among the conventional carriage fixing apparatus; there are a first head carriage screwed on a chassis by hand, a second head carriage fixed by engaging a groove 36a in a head carriage 36 with a carriage fixing lever 34 located at a broken line by hand, which carriage fixing lever 34, is pivotably supported around a fixing pin 35 mounted on a chassis (not shown), as shown in FIG. 1, and a third head carriage fixed by a solenoid and released from being fixed by supplying power of the disk driver to the solenoid.
However, the above conventional carriage fixing apparatus has the following disadvantages:
The head carriage has to be fixed by hand every time the disk driver is moved in the first and second carriage fixing apparatus. Besides, the head carriage will be damaged if a user drives the head carriage without releasing the head carriage from being fixed. Moreover, it is difficult to fix the head carriage since the head carriage must be screwed from a back surface of the disk driver in the first carriage fixing apparatus. Furthermore, in the third carriage fixing apparatus, the disk driver becomes expensive because of the expensive solenoid. In addition, since a large amount of power is necessary to turn on the solenoid, the amount of power consumed by the disk driver increases in a solenoid continuous turning-on method, and the noise generated from the solenoid turned-on negatively affects each element of the disk driver. In addition, it is necessary to use a shield backed-up voltage supply in an intermittent driving method which drives the solenoid during the shielding period even if power is applied to the disk driver.